


I liked you better in your favourite T-shirt.

by duchessofdublin



Category: Glee
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Drug Abuse, F/M, M/M, Molestation, References to Suicide, Self Harming, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:06:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofdublin/pseuds/duchessofdublin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam's insecurities are a bleeding wound that won't heal but he's learned on how to cover them with bandages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I liked you better in your favourite T-shirt.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration : Ham Sandwich - Naturist
> 
> Unbeta'ed again.

You see sometimes Adam can feel it in his fingertips too, the pain and the anger. The pain that surrounds his muscles making them clench in a panic before he breathes out again.

_One, two._

Follow the steps, follow the structure, follow the thought and you’ll breathe again.

Sometimes though Adam can’t find the path, it runs rings around him and he can’t find the beginning. The beginning is the best bit. It’s full of promises and smiles; it’s the warmth that shadows your faces, bathing you in hope and clouding your judgement. It’s the best because it makes you weak, makes you forget the pain. The pain soon follows. Always lingering like a creature in the night, you cannot ditch it and you cannot run from it.

It’s always faster. It always will catch you. It will wrap its dark hands around your throat leaving you gasping, clawing at the anxiety and you cannot see no more.

Yes, Adam prefers the beginning.

Adam’s mum and dad were different. They were never there. They always deemed something more important, a peace protest or an art gallery opening, a screaming match in the kitchen or lying high on the carpets leaving Adam to wake them up to be able to make his sandwiches for lunch. Adam never got kisses in the morning, or a pat on the back when showing a prize, or a packed lunch with a note from his mum like the others, or a play date with other kids in his school, or taught how to ride a bike, or a tree house built for his eight birthday like Timmy did, or a call when he was away from home on a school trip. Adam’s pretty sure they didn’t notice he left.

He wanted a kiss once from his mum who laughed, rasping and ruffled his hair calling him ‘queer’ in a strangled voice, words wrapped around a joint dangling from her lips, her bright red hair shaking with laughter. Adam’s dad didn’t look up from his newspaper. Adam once cried in front of his dad who awkwardly nodded his head at him before leaving to fuck some easy bohemian rebel.

Adam saw true families before; they all smiled at one another and whispered or even shouted encouragement to each other at field park games. If Adam closed his eyes and lay back in the grass a few feet from them he could believe he was wanted too. He could feel the tickle of the grass under his bare toes and the laughter rose higher and higher around him, rising like a chant making Adam feel awakened and he would laugh too, his heart clenching. He would laugh for ages till the air left his lungs and he just lay there feeling sad. He always felt sad after those moments. He didn’t like them.

He had friends too, but they didn’t understand. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t come back to his, or why he could stay out late into the night, or why he was wearing old colourful clothes with holes in his shoes. He couldn’t tell them that his parents were most likely at home lying around with their ‘friends’ in a hazy fog and whispering words of poetry that Adam didn’t understand, that he was out late because he was scared to go home when his dad wasn’t home and his mum was slumped at the kitchen table mumbling about politics and freedom, that his parents didn’t buy him new clothes because why would they  _waste money_  or buy into that  _leaching community_ or put  _chemicals on his skin_  even though they lick chemicals and sniffed them up their noses.

Adam’s sure his friends wouldn’t understand and they don’t

Adam’s always known he was different since he was young. Teachers loved him, calling him bright and ambitious and he would develop into some kind spirit, and his art teacher  _adored_  him. Making Adam feel he was alive with smiles and joy but the teacher was soon replaced with another after she was let go. He didn’t understand but whispers soon spread through the halls about her hands lingering and her heated looks. Adam learned she didn’t mean for it to happen but he wasn’t her only favourite student. He was one of many, one of many pursuits. He still remembers the clench of her palm on his inner thigh as she praised his paintings.

He left England when he was fifteen and travelled to Ireland. He found a woman whose hair was as red as his mum’s but her smile was twice as wide. She was the fire in his life, he wanted to fall in love with her but she wouldn’t allow him. She stopped him with kind words but her fingers curling into his chest made him cry. She let him cry and offered whispered comforts. He loved her anyway but it was different. She taught him how to cycle and she taught him how to cook. She wore frilly dresses with woollen boots and many bangles. She was as loud as a marching band when running. She never angered easily and she shouted at birds when sad. She showed him Gaelic writings in the Mayo and she danced Cèilidh’s in Clare and she sang with Molly Malone on Grafton Street.  She then had shown him friends, people who sang in different tones, and lengths, and verses. She taught him how to sing and how to dance, sliding on cobble stones.

He left Ireland when he was eighteen. He was left with kisses and whispered promises and a belly full of hope. He thought his parents might have thought him dead and his heart stuttered but he carried on. He arrived in America not knowing a bloody thing, his wallet and socks were stolen in minutes and he couldn’t help but laugh at them. He loved it after a homeless man decked him in the shoulder after Adam said ‘Pardon?’ when he had misheard him. He loved it then he stepped into the streets and then he hated it.

_Three, four._

It was the middle. The middles are the uncertain part of the stories. It’s the part in love stories where the couples break up and fight, it’s the part when death happens, when a relative falls sick, when a song stutters, when a character cracks, when a mistake chokes you, when a tear blinds you, when a voice shatters you and when you lose all hope.

Adam lived in a broken down apartment that creaked if he moved too fast across the floorboards, and the neighbours screamed at each other at random times throughout the day leaving Adam staring up at the cracked ceiling unblinking. He tried showering and broke the showerhead and then had to shower with a bucket and a ripped rag. He got hit once by a passing elder neighbour when he said ‘Good morning’, he soon learned to avoid him in the hallways. He worked at a local bar when he didn’t work as a bicycle delivery boy and felt like he was moving in slow motion. He had forgotten why he even came to New York for, why left his drowsy parents, why he stopped singing. Then one night when a band played at the bar, the crowd going wild screaming monotone lyrics and the tips flowing easily, she stepped up on stage.

She had large teeth, and stringy blonde hair and a raspy voice, and Adam fell for her. They fell into bed after brushings of hands and glances over a microphone. He felt alive when she bit into his shoulder so hard he started to bleed. The blood felt like a signal that he was stilling going, his heart still beating, she left bruises on his hips like brands of approval, and she made him try new things. She painted her eyes in thick black lines, the blood-shot lines in her whites so profound they looked like leaching demons. She was wild; she couldn’t get enough of his body. He felt swollen all over after she left. She got him fired after too many times she had stolen whisky bottles, gulping them back in his apartment, he laughed at her spills on the wooden floor. She got him kicked out his apartment after stomping on the floor, screaming bloody murder calling it music. He thought it sounded eerie like she wasn’t screaming out in anger but in desperation. He understood but he didn’t.

He thought they belonged together even if they slept in the streets and couldn’t afford anything, they were in this together then he found her in a petrol station bathroom. Blood spilling around her body like a spreading sea. The blood was so bright against her pale skin, making the skin look hallow. He remembers getting sick and seeing himself in the mirror as he clutched at the sick, seeing the slits on her wrists still leaking blood, taunting him that it still flowed as though she still lived.

He remembers running with a bag pack full of fizzy drinks and cheap pills back to the streets, finding sleep in boxes and then found a rubbish bin and banged out his anger. He was then approached with a man with slick hair and a duffel bags, he stared at Adam before moving to stand opposite him and started to make sounds with his mouth. He had gestured with a tilt of his chin for Adam to continue so he slowly tapped out a rhythm watching the man with wide eyes. They made a beat and Adam began to mutter out a lyric or two. When Adam slowed the beat and then finally stopped, still staring the man picked up his duffel bag pack again and turned to leave. Adam called out to him, his fingertips fluttering, wondering who he was. The man winked and raised a fist then left.

Adam didn’t know why but he waited at the spot again the next day and felt stupid and went to leave then the man came around the man. He came with a girl with spiked blonde hair and she had a wooden box. The man merely winked at him not seeming fazed that Adam was dumbly standing there watching them, he held a guitar and began to strum out a few notes and the girl grinned then sat on the box before leaning over her knees to tap out a beat with the heel of her palm then fingertips. Adam began to sing after a moment, voice broken his fears real and his heart in his throat.

The girl grinned wider and the man hums under his breath and seems to follow Adam’s words. The tune getting higher, Adam vaguely noticed a crowd hovering them but he closed his eyes and sang, his heart aching, seeing the blood and her sticky whisky fingers. When he opened them again it was into hazel bright ones, the man was smiling at him and told him to wait.

So he waited.

The man showed up progressively over the next week, the gang he brought with growing and growing. The ache in his heart easing as the gang welcomed him with large palms, great belly laughs and quirky jokes. The girl sitting in his lap shouting encourage as he sang out his frustration and slowly his joy, his laughter into songs growing with the group.

They soon enough showed up at the corner of the street with various instruments and lists of songs, a crowd already formed and Adam interacting with them, gliding easily through them cracking jokes and spinning them in circles as he sang into their ears. They soon became a group; a family. Adam learned not to ashamed of the scars marring his wrists and forearms. He got his first beanie from them, it was striped with a blue bobble on it, he wore it and the crowd cooed over it. He loved beanies from then on as the group kept pulling it over his eyes, their laughter ringing his ears, mingling with his own.

He told them of his past and they told him of theirs. He moved in and they showed him their school: NYADA. He wanted to get in; no, he  _needed_ to get in so as a family does, they got him in. They helped him with his past school work even now his spelling isn’t the greatest, they each one by one taught him his subjects, each becoming his tutors and putting up with his frustrated tears and slapping his head when he began to lag behind, they pushed and pushed until his scores were polished and they were golden and he got the nod but then he had to auction and he panicked.

He thought of his past and his failures and how much his parents didn’t even try to contact him and the blood and the overwhelming buzz in his chest and his grades and his stealing and his neighbours who screamed all the times like his head was and how the ground was creaking and he just can’t breathe and he’s the worst-

_Five, six._

They stood in front of him and lanced a tight link with arms and all as one screamed his name. He had auctioned and he had got in like they always knew he would and he had cried. The sobs pushing at his chest, raking his body, his family laughing and pushing telling him to pull himself together he was  _embarrassing_  them and he choked on his gruff laughter and told them he loved them. It was the first he said and he had said it with snot on his face, his ears red and a group of lunatics crowding him.

They paused then called him a sap and rugby tackled him, theirs screams ringing in the streets.

It was about two months into NYADA when he noticed all the clichés that was in every school whether in England or Japan, it stood like a blaring horn and Adam hated it but he loved the school so he branded with his family and came up with  _Adam’s Apples_. He was embarrassed that it was to be called that but then they said he was their glue and he softened.

 He was the glue in the mess that was people eating toast at three in the morning and discussing women rights, that was the pillow forts in the living room, that was the screaming of inappropriate songs in grocery stores, that was serenading people in the meat aisle and the stealing of shopping trolleys then rolling down the street singing  _bohemian rhapsody_ in as many accents of possible, that was the walking of dogs they found in the parks, that was the midnight games in the park, that was the crying over movies then eating horrendous amount of food. He loved them. They were his glue. They liked to believe his was theirs but who were they kidding?

About three new people joined the group after joining  _Adam’s Apples_  but no more as they became the outcasts, theunsociables, the weirdoes and they loved it, until they didn’t. They started to get worn down because of it but Adam held hope and they got two more people the next year until they finally thought  _fuck it_  and gave up on the rest of the school. They survived through more than nonacceptance from a load of prissy rich kids and they would keep on going.

Their love as a love was more profound as they grew in a group, it was growing and it was squeezing Adam’s heart reminding him how he came from so much and he would hold them together just a little bit tighter. He sometimes got overwhelmed and had to have a few moments to himself, head in hands, shaking, whispering to himself, fighting against the old images flashing behind clenched eyelids and then he would breathe and he would stand again and grin. It just was starting to wear and tear with the taunting of the reminder that sounded strongly of his mum’s voice.

Then Kurt Hummel walked in his life.

_Seven,eight._

Kurt made his heart clench almost painfully. He hadn’t kissed anybody since her and now he couldn’t get enough glances at him, his family calling him a creep and a sugar daddy but shutting up when they saw his glazed over look. They couldn’t tell him  _no_  and  _stop_  before he was charmed by the lovely Kurt Hummel and falling hard. It was nothing like her. Kurt smiled tightly, slips stretching and dimples breaking, his green eyes bright and Adam could feel his crinkling for the first time for somebody who wasn’t family. He felt his fingertips itching to touch, to grab, to claim and to keep. He couldn’t stop himself, he was greedy and he was so in love.

Thankfully Kurt was in the same boat as him, both of them floating off, forgetting, only laughing into each other’s mouth and fingers tangled, hearts beating, matching. They couldn’t leave each other and Adam didn’t want him to, he wanted to keep him, brand him _family_  and he could see himself falling so deeply he would never recover if he wasn’t caught but Kurt didn’t disappoint.

Kurt whose hands were soft, almost feminine and his ears that were pointed, claiming himself an elf and that made him moan loudly if stroked with a tongue. Kurt with his high voice that rose with arousal, and that broke with a snap of Adam’s hips. Kurt with his fingers that clung onto Adam’s shoulders, leaving half-moon creases, and his heels that dug into Adam’s lower back pulling him deeper, harder. Kurt who laughed and pushed at Adam who tried pulling him to a warm tub, or who screamed when hoisted onto his shoulder carried like a prey for a caveman, or who shouted at him if he left the oven on, or who threw shoes at him if Adam didn’t always agree with his opinion, or who refused to talk to Adam for days until Adam will charm him one way or another when Adam really knows all along he wasn’t mad; he’s just scared that Adam will leave one day and it’s a test. Adam could never leave him, he was his  _life_.

Kurt was insecure because of his past and so was Adam. They were nerve wreaking together but they clung together and they were safe, they were warm and they had hope.

Adam remembers proposing to Kurt and feeling like he was going to get sick, his stomach in knots, palms sweating and beanie gone and his family whispering words of encouragement but he couldn’t hear them over the rush in his ears.

The air left him when Kurt looked at him, eyes wet and smile tight, showing slightly uneven teeth.

“Yes.”

It was his beginning.

_Nine, ten._

**Author's Note:**

> Box OFC sits on: http://blog.peteredhead.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/image000.jpg
> 
> Song Adam sings ; Hudson Taylor - Dinner for One : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgtaAQmpAc
> 
> Adam's beanie : http://www.riverisland.com/men/accessories/hats/Blue-Fairisle-knit-bobble-beanie-hat-267795


End file.
